Tyrone Hayes
Associate Professor, Integrative Biology
Tyrone Hayes, who received his B.A. from Harvard and Ph.D. from Berkeley, is a specialist in the developmental endocrinology of amphibians but whose work encompasses a “wide sweep in biology.” An internationally recognized researcher, he is noteworthy for the large number of undergraduate students who work in his laboratories, co-author papers, and present at professional societies. “Professor Hayes is amazing,” says one student. “He’s a brilliant man and gives fantastic, thought-provoking lectures.”
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
"Biology is the study of life.” I start and end each of my courses by reading this definition from the dictionary. My goal is to ensure that students see each lecture as an explanation of a process relative to their lives and not as an esoteric lesson from a textbook.
Students become interested and excited about biology when they see the relevance to their lives immediately. My human endocrinology course is designed to accomplish this goal. Rather than teach separate lectures on reproduction, metabolism, etc., I follow a human life cycle. We start with reproduction, go through fertilization, fetal development, labor and delivery, juvenile growth, and puberty, and thus a complete cycle. Students not only learn human endocrinology, but we pass through developmental stages that they have all experienced. Furthermore, my inclusion of personal anecdotes makes the material even more “real.” In the lecture on fetal development, I use ultrasounds of my children. In the osmoregulation lecture, I discuss the physiological response of my children when we camp in the desert. The latter lecture has become known as "why my daughter does not pee in the desert.”
I stress the important intermingling of teaching and research: If I cannot teach people about my research, then the impact of my research is limited. In turn, the quality of one's teaching is improved by active involvement in research. Further, I advise about ten undergraduate students in laboratory research each year. By their second year, most students write proposals and protocols, design experiments and participate fully in all aspects of the research. Most of my students obtain funding and present their data at professional meetings alongside other scientists (postdoctoral fellows and Ph.D. students) and co-author publications. For students not working in the laboratory, research becomes less mysterious when they know that their classmates conduct publishable work.
Most importantly, I realize that what I learn is equally important as what I teach. In order to teach anything one has to learn it first. Learning what students like and what they don't (in terms of style and presentation) is as important as the material itself. A good syllabus or information-packed lecture has no impact if the lecturer does not connect with and excite the students. Remembering what I liked and what made me learn as a student (I believe) has made me a better teacher. Fortunately, I had many good teachers, and what I remember most is that they loved their jobs and that they lived to watch students get excited about science. As a result, I love my job, and live to see my students get excited about science. My goal is to make my students as excited as my professors made me.
